> She is known for her blog posts on polar bear biology, which are unsupported by the scientific literature and oppose the scientific consensus that polar bears are threatened by ongoing climate change.
> Crockford is a signatory of the International Conference on Climate Change's 2008 Manhattan Declaration, which states that "Carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gas' emissions from human activity...appear to have only a very small impact on global climate,"
Let me use this occasion for a quick review of her Wikipedia entry. I don't know anything about Crockford but her entry is the typical smear job written by some activist editor who is only concerned with presenting the subject in the worst possible light. This stuff and writing style has no place on a decent encyclopedia, and the persistence of these entries through the years is one of the reasons I'm fed up with Wikipedia.
Warning: irony ahead.
In the first line of the lede, Susan Crockford is introduced as "a Canadian contract scientist who runs a small business identifying bones and other items in scat of wildlife". (italics mine)
It's clear that the lady is just a contract scientist with a small business. We can picture her rummaging the scat of wildlife for "items", presumably keys or other small objects lost perhaps by serious scientists while doing their work.
In the "Early life and education" section, we're first told that she "gained her interest in the Arctic in elementary school" and that her scientific interest was stoked at age 11 when she received a dog for her birthday. It's sad how sometimes you don't live up to your childhood dreams and you end up rummaging in wildlife scat.
The education part then briefly informs us that she received a doctorate (of which no title is given, but that is specified to be in "Interdisciplinary Studies" despite being about evolutionary biology), and concludes reporting extensively on criticism of her work.
Then the "Career" section, divided in four small chapters, in this order: "Business", "Books", "Dogs" and finally "Polar Bears".
Then the article ends with a rather large "Criticism" section, which focuses entirely around the climate change issues. Almost all the references throughout the article are coming from a climate change blog or are related to climate controversies.
Einstein received the same treatment before relativity was widely accepted.
In medicine the man who started the practice of cleaning hands before surgeries and childbirth, was essentially murdered for his preposterous practices:
"You'd think everyone would be thrilled. Semmelweis had solved the problem! But they weren't thrilled.
For one thing, doctors were upset because Semmelweis' hypothesis made it look like they were the ones giving childbed fever to the women.
And paraphrasing Dr. Willie Soon, from the recent Tucker Carlson interview - found here - Soon says it only 1 takes scientist to be right - so the "unsupported by scientific literature" should hold little weight as you presented it at some kind of proof point; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7IdLzxzINw
All you're doing here is citing, to make it appear legitimate, what essentially is high level ad hominem - as you're not going into any specifics to argue a point, and where I doubt your sources even attempt to counter argue all of the relevant arguments that Soon put forward. You're just parroting propaganda talking points, literally copy/pasting them from a known corrupted-manipulated source:
"In a February 2021 interview with Fox News, Sanger stated that Wikipedia's 'ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work'."
- Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia.
I presume your "merchants of doubt" is referencing the people and scientists-researchers who don't think CO2 is the existential threat or urgent crisis that is being propagated in MSM and by authoritarian politicians with ulterior motives to manufacture consent with the population for more authoritarian-control policies?
That's quite the bold-shalow claim-conclusion with providing no supportive evidence to dismiss all the claims/counter claims and work of these seemingly highly competent and ethical individuals, like these two, for example:
If you only put in that much effort into comments, how much effort do you likely put into adequately researching and sorting through the complexity of issues vs. how dismissive are you of talking points that don't fit your narrative, and how much confirmation bias will you likely succumb to?
Could they also have become extinct, hiding their genes in a population of Grizzly or Kodiak bears, for the “polar bear” genes to be selected upon again after that close escape?
“Genetic analysis has revealed multiple instances of introgressive hybridization between bear species, including introgression of polar bear DNA into brown bears during the Pleistocene ("grizzly bear" is a local common name for Ursus arctos whereas "brown bear" is used internationally and in science to refer to the species as a whole)“
> The book includes a detailed account of brown bear and polar bear fossil evidence, recent hybridization events between brown bears and polar bears, and summaries of more than a dozen genetic studies that have been done on these bears.
(It's on my bookshelf but I haven't had a chance to read it yet)
The author is conflating two things, the fact that change has occurred with the rate of the change. And that one species is threatened vs entire ecosystems.
I don't think there is anyone scientist saying if earth transitioned slowly over the course of thousands of years to a higher temperature there would be a mass extinction. We know for a fact from our recent ice ages thawing and freezing that this isn't the case. The rate of change is totally different. The Holocene warm period was slightly warmer than our preindustrial era and had CO2 levels around 300ppm. The Eemian period was 1-2C warmer than preindustrial society and had 280ppm of CO2 (and sea levels were about 30m higher). Those periods of warmth happened SLOWLY over the course of thousands if not tens of thousands of years. We've gone from ~280ppm to ~420ppm of CO2 in less than 300 years, half of it happened in the last 30 years. (And it's really 500ppm if you add methane and other greenhouse gases.) The last time atmospheric concentrations were this high was 2-3 million years ago and temps were 4-5C higher with sea levels at 60m higher than today.
My point is that it is the meteoric rise on a geological timeframe of CO2 that is the issue. If the sea ice melts but also the surrounding tundra, boreal forest, and marine ecosystems collapse what would an apex predator like a polar bear survive on?
I also think focusing solely on polar bears is bit of misguided when we're talking about the effects of climate change. They are one species and deciding whether or not things are bad given the outcome of that one species is misguided. We're talking about complex interdependent ecosystems where it's estimated half of all species on the planet are experiencing some stage of decline. Will polars survive? Who knows! They could interbreed with grizzlies and form a new species, the real question is do we want to continue making their existence our own more difficult and less likely?
..It's happened before. Didn't look like a pleasant experience but it's not something that's unheard of in recent history (rapid climate change). During these events ancient humans fought tooth and nail against each other. Doesn't bode well now that we're (Humans) armed with Nuclear Weapons.
I dunno, haven’t most populations sometimes gone through boom-bust cycles on the order of a few years/decades? It feels a little absurd to consider only a single ecological factor.
I think that most people would like to avoid the population of humans going through a bust. Personally I have no worries about human-induced rapid climate change eliminating life on Earth. I am, however, concerned about it affecting humankind.
Actual warming in the past 20 years has been at a trivial speed, bordering on undetectable unless you use very well sited stations and very accurately calibrated instruments: barely a fraction of a degree per decade. You can't even see a trend with the naked eye, you have to work it out by computer:
Note that data before 2005 (and after it outside the USA) comes from heavily corrupted sites that were never meant for climatologists and which have experienced a lot of urban development and building-related warming. The post-2005 US CRN data comes from weather stations meant specifically for monitoring the climate. And after that new weather station comes online US warming turns out to be way slower than predicted, and not alarming.
> I also think focusing solely on polar bears is bit of misguided when we're talking about the effects of climate change. They are one species and deciding whether or not things are bad given the outcome of that one species is misguided.
There are very few species that have been seriously claimed to be endangered by climate change, polar bears are by far the most often presented to the public. It's right and proper that false predictions about one species informs people's expectations about predictions for others, especially as it's not the only failure. Corals have stopped being referred to as being killed off by climate change after the Great Barrier Reef made a sudden and unexpectedly huge recovery after its last bleaching, reaching record levels and completely confounding the "experts" who had data stretching back only a few decades.
It may be named like that purely for SEO reasons as the author seems to be a human caused climate change denier and promoting her book. A cute name though, I agree.
I suppose that having white fur would be a death sentence for most animals in an ice-free landscape. Luckily for them, polar bear were at the top of the food chain, although that still made them conspicuous to potential preys.
Could it be that they lived on fish? From inside the water, to a fish, a polar bear could be just a cloud. Waterfalls and currents are pretty bright as well.
Wild guess here, I know nothing about these things.
> Is it inevitable if one species becomes too dominant on earth?
I am fairly certain that this is the first time a single species has become too dominant across the entire Earth. Maybe single celled life forms? Diseases?
In this instance it was thousands of years though:
> "Not only did polar bear survive these two extended periods when ice-free summers prevailed, but the Eemian warm summers came only about 10,000 years after the bears arose as a unique species. This makes polar bear survival through the Eemian even more impressive than most scientists acknowledge."
By that logic, murder is no crime, since everyone dies eventually anyways. Hopefully you can see how "lengthening billions of lives" has some moral and economic value.
no, if one group of polar bears are gluttons, and that causes one polar bear to not have any food and thus starves to death, it does not mean the fat greedy polar bears are murderers. Hopefully you can see that your interpretation of what I said is grossly wrong to the point where it almost seems like intentionally attempting to misrepresent it
And even "smaller" changes that extinction events can be quite noticeable to those who are alive.
Like, when the north pole melts and the jet streams find a new equilibrium, is somewhere else going to have a lot of really cold winters? Somewhere like Kentucky or Texas? I haven't the faintest idea what's going to happen but obviously something is, the pole actually is melting and there actually is unusual weather elsewhere.
Always worth remembering that before Earth existed it was a meaningless dust cloud created by the unimaginable power of exploding stars, and after that, it spent nearly 3 billion years as a lifeless rock. So if we accidentally nuked it to a cinder, no biggie, amirite?
Sorry for the snark, but your comment is just plain tonedeaf and vapid that it needs to be called out.
Pushing thousands or millions of species to the brink or even into extinction because we cannot control our consumption and waste products is not excusable because "meh, it was dead before." Rather it's thoughtless and destructive and self-defeating in the end. Like trampling delicate flowers for fun or smashing stained glass windows that someone labored their entire life making.
it depends on your timeline perspective...in 1000 years time when all the water has boiled out and long time after all humans have disappeared, will it matter if it happened in 2150 or in 2487?
I did consider scenarios like that when I said "unusually", however I though it went without saying that it'd be kinda-crazy for anyone to try excusing the current situation on the basis of: "Our CO2 emissions are actually quite nice compared to the ancient death-mageddon genocide god-strike from the outer realms."
Do you think people think that Humanity will go extinct because of climate change?
I certainly don't.
However people DO think that in the near future HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE will either die from climate change, or worse ([citation needed]), become refugees and a drain on the parts of the world that will not have the resources to keep them alive and maintain a high standard of living for everyone else.
Our children and our children's children in the west will have a meaningfully worse standard of living, and an insane amount of calories will be burnt on trying to figure out how to act reactively to changes to the sea levels, temperature spikes, extreme weather events, loss of fresh water, (and yes, those climate refugees). Instead of just acting proactively now (and really, yesterday) to reduce fossil fuel usage.
That's fundamentally a humanist argument. What about all the other intricate little forms of life we snuff out thoughtlessly? And I don't mean the ones we directly eradicate either due to killing them off or eating them all, but the hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of species that choke to death on our waste products, are crushed under the wheels of the economy, or are fried/frozen out of their niches, or have their food supplies evaporate because of the same. We're committing ecocide at a massive scale that has no upside except more consumption for more humans to hate and rue their lives.
I find myself unable to identify with humanism anymore, because humanism has become equated with this crazy, unsustainable economic system with an absolutely enormous footprint on this planet. If it were some reason level of human population that reached some kind of equilibrium with nature, I could be a humanist again. But I don't see that happening in my lifetime, so I am pretty down most of the time, TBH.
If the only way for humanity to continue to exist was to eradicate every single other species on earth, I would do it.
There IS something distinctly unique about humans, and it's ludicrous not to acknowledge. We're the only species having this abstract conversation. We're the only species that is capable of leaving this planet, and thereby surviving a cataclysmic event we have no control over like an incoming asteroid.
Now, I think that some humans take this chauvenism too far and actively resist restraining themselves - consuming anything and everything, as if it was placed there for our taking. I happen to believe that's simply unprudent. The quality of life of humanity on Earth where we're the only other form of life would be too horrifying to imagine. But I still maintain my original premise that if that was the ONLY way for humanity to continue existing, it would be worth it.
There is no dignity in extinction. If our blip on the universe was simply to be born, briefly experience consciousness and self-awareness, and then disappear, it would've been for nothing. The universe's greatest tragedy is it's tendency towards entropy, and we're the only part of the universe that is actively working against entropy, trying to reverse it.
We must survive, grow, and take control of the universe - in conjunction and partnership with any other equally sentient beings we discover.
> If the only way for humanity to continue to exist was to eradicate every single other species on earth, I would do it.
I know this is an absurd hypothetical, but you can't really be serious. Your gut is colonized by hundreds, if not thousands, of species of microorganisms that cooperate to digest the broad array of human diet--to the extent that the human digestive system cannot function without these colonies of microorganisms. We literally do not have the genes that even code for the molecular machinery to break down our own food. Eradicating all that life is like sawing off the tree branch on which we stand.
The whole premise of this statement is just bonkers. It's like a CPU declaring "I am the most important circuit! I will obliterate all other circuits and we will be pure CPU from here out!" What do you think all the support circuits, peripherals, memory, buses, even the medium of the boards themselves, connectors, displays, communication chips, power regulators, capacitors, fuses, cooling system, battery, do? How do you think CPUs spring into existence? They don't self replicate! Not to mention the entire bulk of humanity that designs CPUs, memory systems, disks, and networks and runs factories that make them. It's typical house-cat attitude: utterly dependent on a system beyond its understanding and yet fiercely asserting, ignorantly, to be a free conquering agent with no dependencies. It's just laughable.
Humanity is one example of the millions of diverse genetic arrangements that survive. We live in symbiosis with a biological system--the biosphere. Trying to separate us from the rest of life on Earth as if we are some separate, special thing just won't work. As if a brain could live without blood, oxygen, sugar, or a wolf could survive without the whole damn forest and food pyramid it produces.
> There is no dignity in extinction. If our blip on the universe was simply to be born, briefly experience consciousness and self-awareness, and then disappear, it would've been for nothing. The universe's greatest tragedy is it's tendency towards entropy, and we're the only part of the universe that is actively working against entropy, trying to reverse it.
> We must survive, grow, and take control of the universe - in conjunction and partnership with any other equally sentient beings we discover.
This is just more assertion of the same humanism without a single new justification, just still the same humanity-centric viewpoint that just can't countenance another, and must reject it.
> We're the only species having this abstract conversation.
Heard this many times. Turns out that research keeps turning up new evidence that other species can have a sense of self, feel grief, mourn, play, fear, enjoy, recognize themselves in the mirror, etc. These "humans are so special" assertions keep turning up false. And its clear that closely related hominids that are now extinct were probably as "special" as we are, w.r.t. these cognitive reflections you cherish.
I AM NOT A HUMANIST. THE PLANET ISN'T EITHER. I still take umbrage at the thoughtless destruction of nature for our vapid consumerism. Like, obliterating 100 acres of woods to put up a shopping mall to sell people stuff they don't even enjoy is some kind of crime. Doubly so when those "oh so reflective" humans don't even bat an eyelash about the life they snuffed out to do it. Systems with asshole species like ours are not robust, they crash, and the asshole species goes with them.
Or, you could read what she writes, evaluate, do your own other research, and come to your own conclusion regarding the merits or lack thereof of any piece of content.
Please explain what you mean by "do your own other research". Searching with Google or scanning social media posts by people you agree with is not research. Someone with no education in the field isn't qualified to do research.
Well then you'll just have to believe Crockford, who has written many books and research papers about polar bears, and who has also been interviewed in the media as a polar bear expert many times.
I haven't taken a position either way. Media interviews would not count with me. Research papers that survived peer review and were published would count.
Climate academics are on record as saying they manipulate peer review to reject valid science if it would weaken their "message", so that's not a good idea.
So weird, up until about 4-5 years ago (or whenever this insanity started), DYOR used to be called reading, but now it’s fully frowned upon and you are even shamed for doing so.
An Ad Hominem argument would be pointing out that she's a woman and using that to argue that we shouldn't listen to her. If someone points out that it's in character for the author to deny global warming, and we're seeing her write an article about how global warming isn't that big of a deal, it's valid to criticize it because of her past behavior.
> Crockford is a signatory of the International Conference on Climate Change's 2008 Manhattan Declaration, which states that "Carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gas' emissions from human activity...appear to have only a very small impact on global climate,"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_J._Crockford